MAJESTIC SEA CREATURE

Getting outside on a warm and sunny day feels natural. It just happens, there’s very little friction to it.

When it’s cloudy and a bit cool, not so cool as to be cold, but cool enough to not feel comfy, it takes a bit more effort to get out the door.

Like the weather, less-than-ideal conditions in everything else also generate resistance at times. My bike has been in a state of perpetual half-brokenness as I work on learning how to adjust derailleurs and fix issues with shifting. Sometimes it has been totally unusable, but most of the time it is in a state of “working but not working all that well”, a cloudy and cool sort of situation.

But whatever. Today I got out on the road and on the trails for a couple hours, gears a little grindy, arms a bit goosebumpy, but I enjoyed the ride just the same.

Now I have to go clean a sinkful of thanksgiving dishes in a sink that’s only half-functioning because of a garbage disposal mishap and a last-minute hasty repair yesterday. Cloudy and cool, but not cold and rainy.

Knowing the difference, makes a difference.

A billion tiny snapshots per day. They blend together at times, if you let them. But you can also choose to let each one pass by in its own separate frame, flickering in and then out of your life like the light of a firefly. Blink. Blink. Blink.

Last night I had a strange dream about a massive rooftop garden in some city, frozen over, nearly a mile up in the sky. I stood in this garden, in the middle of a blizzard, staring at a rickety rope bridge extending deep out into the unknown, presumably to another mile-high rooftop, while so many people formed a giant line as they crossed it, easily a hundred of them or more, disappearing into the clouds and snow one by one; wind rocking them gently, like an ocean wave, slowly enough to not impede their movement, but strong enough to make it clear that the bridge was not clamped down in any way, free to move wherever the wind might take it—In the dream I stood completely still, staring at this bridge while the crowd around me kept moving towards it as if it was the obvious and ordinary thing to do, and with each one that stepped off of the rooftop and onto that bridge I wondered, what must be on the other side that makes them so sure it’s where they want to go, and that the reward is greater than the risk?

A strange dream indeed.

As of Monday, I will officially owe mortgage money to a new faceless bank all on my own, rather than having a shared loan with a prior faceless bank.

Seems anti-climactic, but this is the final step in untangling the tangle, and well… given that it has taken 100 days so far and literally over 50 different documents proving that I am in fact a “good risk” well… fuck yeah, can’t wait to finish this.

Once the Town Clerk at the New Haven Hall of Records fishes out the signed deed I placed in their lobby dropbox today and properly files it, I will officially become the sole owner of the house I’ve lived in for the last decade.

That I am excited about.

I am slightly less excited about becoming the sole borrower on the house’s mortgage within a couple weeks from now, but eh, still feels like independence and closure just around the bend.

To make use of something, you rarely need to understand how it works, just what it can do for you.

To repair something, you do need to understand how it works.

Repairing something you have not repaired before involves making mistakes.

Mistakes often lead to damage, requiring further repairs, which in turn require even deeper understanding.

The more you understand something, the less damage your repairs will do.

But that understanding often comes the hard way.

(Philosophical musings on a badly broken bike)